During the past few years Africa has become a fast growing e-commerce market and turned into a very attractive stage for the biggest worldwide corporations and investments.

Such companies as Uber and Facebook have already their presence at the continent. Amazon and Alibaba are planning to enter the Africa`s market in the nearest future. And this interest is not a surprise. Africa is the world’s second-most-populous continent, which offers new business opportunities for online merchants and agencies. Experts predict that by 2025 Africans could be buying seventy-five billion dollars worth of goods and services online annually.

The biggest open source and e-commerce event in Africa – CMS Africa Summit will be held in Abuja, Nigeria on the 3rd and 4th March 2017. And we are proud to announce that the Vice President of Meet Magento Association, Kuba Zwolinski, is going to represent the Association at the event. Kuba, as one of the speakers, will have his talk on the topic: “ Meet Magento – open source that’s changing the world… of commerce”.

We had a chance to ask Kuba a few questions regarding his attendance at the conference:

You are attending CMS Africa Summit as Vice-President of Meet Magento Association. What are your goals and expectations from the conference?

It’s a great way to understand e-commerce boom in African countries and corresponding challenges and opportunities. Hopefully I can also increase interest in open source solutions with Magento as an excellent tool for building startup business. It may be opportunity for both merchants and developers to expand cross-border business.

How would you evaluate an e-commerce market in Africa? In your opinion what are its distinguishing features?

E-commerce is definitely booming in Africa. It brings amazing economic impact but also is connected with many challenges – frauds, distrust, infrastructure, logistics and maybe most important, literacy rate.

For sure mobile & marketplaces are keywords for the region e-business. “Mobile first” is not only a marketing term there, it’s actual situation. Not everyone has a laptop/desktop but most of people there have mobile phones and are used to do everything from the phone. Marketplaces are located in every aspects of African economy – markets are everywhere and everyone is selling something. Digital marketplaces are natural continuation however they have to face a lot of challenges and competition from less official sellers.

How do you think can we expect for the Meet Magento Africa in the nearest future?

Meet Magento was always the best way to help developers and merchants in emerging markets to share knowledge, grow their business and build something great together. It will take some time and effort but it would be great to see vibrant and active Magento community in Nigeria or other African countries.

Exploring new opportunities, markets and communities always was one of the main aims of Meet Magento events. Meet Magento already has its events in more than 40 countries. We believe that year by year our communities in each country are growing, interest for events is increasing and such countries as Nigeria will join to our big family.

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